‘He was in a great place’: Aaron Hernandez friends, fellow inmates shocked by suicide

The Bristol County District Attorney’s office released Aaron Hernandez’s prison file on Friday, reportedly in response to a public records request by the Associated Press.

The prison file, included in full below, contains notes from interviews with Hernandez’s friends and fellow inmates following his hanging suicide on April 19.

The interview notes, which are partially redacted, reveal a widespread sense of shock and surprise that the ex-NFL star was suicidal, just days after he was acquitted of double murder. He had been serving a life sentence on a previous murder conviction when he was found dead by hanging in his cell at the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Massachusetts.

The report includes a summary of the interviews:

Consistent among the inmates interviewed was that Hernandez kept to himself, was very spiritual; appeared to be positive, liked to meditate and did not observe him to be acting any differently or having any issues.

One interview subject, who identified himself as one of Hernandez’s “close friends,” said that Hernandez had been in particularly good spirits in the days before his death.

“Just spoke with him yesterday and he was in a great place,” the unidentified source said. “Since Friday’s verdict he had been talking about the NFL and going back to play even if it wasn’t with the Pats.”

“There was absolutely no indication he would do anything like that,” the source said about Hernandez’s suicide.

Another source said that Hernandez had been looking forward to a visit from his fiancee and daughter, while multiple people interviewed noted that Hernandez had become increasingly spiritual during his time in prison, and frequently spoke “in a religious tone.”

“They felt that his suicide had been some kind of religious message,” the report states.